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Presentation by Martin Gould, Ed.D.
Senior Research Specialist
National Council on Disability
before
OSEP Annual Leadership Forum, Panel Presentation, Juvenile Justice
July 16, 2004
In May 2003, NCD released the research report Addressing
the Needs of Youth with Disabilities in the Juvenile Justice System:
The Status of Evidence-Based Research. Why did we focus on this
issue? We were aware that:
- up to 20 percent of the estimated 100,000 youth in
incarceration have serious mental disorders:
- 20 to 50 percent have attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder;
- 12 percent have intellectual disabilities;
and
- 30 percent or more have specific learning
disabilities.
If you are young, have a disability, and happen to
end up in the juvenile justice system, most likely your disability
will go unnoticed and unaddressed, and your chance of leading a
productive life will rapidly disappear.
NCD wanted to identify what works, programmatically
speaking, that can be brought to bear by school and juvenile justice
systems on behalf of youth with disabilities to address their unmet
needs. The specific objectives of the research were to examine:
current laws and policies affecting youth with disabilities
at risk of delinquency or involved in the juvenile justice system
; relationships between
disability, delinquency, and involvement in the juvenile justice
system;
factors associated with disability and delinquency;
current and anticipated delinquency- and
disability-related programming targeting at-risk youth;
effectiveness of prevention, intervention
and treatment, and management strategies for reducing delinquency
and addressing disability-related needs among the population;
barriers and facilitators to implementing
effective strategies for helping youth; and
recommended "next steps" for increasing
the scope and quality of practice for reducing delinquency among
and addressing the disability-related needs of at-risk youth.
Data
and Methodology
Four sources of information were used for this report: a review
of literature, interviews with knowledgeable stakeholders, and case
studies of particular programs. As is typical of synthesis reviews,
this research summarized what existing research and some observers
of disability law and juvenile justice say about each of the seven
objectives that were the focus of this report. In addition, the
research for this report also reviewed the relevant federal laws
and policies related to delinquency prevention and juvenile justice
and their connections to evidence-based research.
Findings
The nine (9) major findings of NCD’s research were:
Despite calls for greater prevention and early intervention
initiatives in schools and the juvenile justice system, there is
little evidence that past, current, or proposed laws will suffice
to create this change or to overcome the many conflicting perspectives
about youth with disabilities or young offenders.
Any challenges to implementing disability
law in schools are magnified in the juvenile justice system, where
there is little understanding of disabilities or disability law
and where few resources exist to adequately address the needs of
youth with disabilities.
Most sources suggest that many schools are
not providing legally required services to youth with disabilities,
in schools or in the juvenile justice system.
Some research and anecdotal evidence suggests that
as schools have become more restrictive and punitive (e.g., zero
tolerance approaches to misbehavior), they have increasingly pushed
greater numbers of youth with disabilities into the juvenile justice
system.
Few local, state, or national organizations maintain
consistent or reliable records of the types and levels of services
or funding of programs that focus on youth with disabilities who
are at risk of entering or involved in the juvenile justice system.
Despite calls for significant prevention and early
intervention efforts in schools and the juvenile justice system,
there is little evidence that such efforts are widespread.
Youth from diverse cultures, including Native American
youth, are over represented at most stages of the juvenile justice
system and among the population of youth with disabilities.
A range of increasingly popular intervention
strategies and trends exists in schools and the juvenile justice
system. Although some explicitly focus on youth with disabilities,
many more diffusely focus on youth with behavioral problems.
Researchers have not systematically identified
and assessed interventions or practices that focus primarily on
youth with disabilities who are at risk of delinquency or are involved
in the juvenile justice system. As a result, there remains little
scientific basis for recommending specific programs for these youth.
Major NCD Recommendations
* Identify a range of strategies to enforce and
promote compliance with federal disability law as it relates to
children and youth with disabilities who are at risk of delinquency,
including those that increase effective programming for youth in
schools and in juvenile justice settings.
* Increase funding and/or resources to schools and the juvenile
justice system to ensure that youth with disabilities receive appropriate
services.
* Designate a single federal agency whose sole focus is to ensure
that the rights and needs of youth with disabilities entering or
in the juvenile justice system are addressed. The Coordinating Council
on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention may be well-suited
for this leadership role.
* Focus on research that establishes the true prevalence of youth
with disabilities of different types among at-risk populations in
schools and across all stages of the juvenile justice system; the
needs/services gap, including compliance with disability law; the
causes of overrepresentation, where it exists, of youth with disabilities
in the juvenile justice system, especially correctional facilities;
and effective systems level and program level approaches, including
federal laws, for addressing the needs of youth, including youth
from diverse racial/ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
* Undertake a comprehensive assessment to determine what programs
and policies are most effective in schools, communities, and the
juvenile justice system. Such an approach will ensure that a more
definitive body of knowledge can develop to determine " what
works " and for whom.
Conclusions
NCD ' s findings on the status of evidence-based research and policy
are consistent with those of three other federal level agency research
endeavors, namely, the President's Mental Health Commission in 2003,
the General Accounting Office (GAO) 2003 report on Child Welfare
and Juvenile Justice, and the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
report of July 2004 on Juvenile Detention Centers.
There is a tremendous gap in empirically based
knowledge about children and youth with disabilities, especially
those who are either at risk of delinquency or involved in the juvenile
justice system. This gap covers a wide spectrum of largely unanswered
questions involving distinct sets of policy issues. These issues
range from the potentially conflicting philosophies underlying existing
laws to what is known about effective prevention, intervention,
and delinquency management strategies and efforts to ensure that
the rights and needs of children and youth with disabilities are
addressed.
The bulk of research
on the children and youth of focus in this report--those with disabilities
who are at risk of delinquency or involved in the juvenile justice
system--provides a relatively weak foundation for drawing sound
empirical generalizations. For example, one of the only relatively
well-studied issues relating to this population is the prevalence
of disabilities among incarcerated youth. NCD's research suggests
that disabilities, especially learning disabilities and serious
emotional disorders, are far more common among incarcerated youth
than among youth in schools. Yet this research, too, suffers from
inconsistent definitions and measurements. In addition, it provides
a weak foundation for making generalizations about youth in other
parts of the juvenile justice system, including probation, parole,
and nonsecure residential treatment facilities.
Without a clear understanding of what works, communities
can become awash in a maze of programs and services that claim effectiveness
in deterring delinquency yet have no factual information or evidence
supporting their effectiveness. |
